FOSDEM, part 1

My day started out bright and early, meeting Tom Marble, Richard Fontana and Bradley Kuhn to get breakfast and prepare ourselves for the legal issues and policy devroom. I have to credit Tom, there really was a demand for the room and I thought we had some really interesting conversations. I did slip out throughout the day to get to various GNOME related things, but the devroom was my anchor, which was sometimes difficult when it was stuffed to the gills!

I held two sessions today. One was was an unexpected talk I gave with Bradley about fiscal sponsorship organizations when one of morning speakers let us know that he was stuck on a train and wasn’t going to make it. The second was moderating a panel on software patents, which is always interesting.

The whole track was good, but I have to admit that one of my favorite things was having Harald Welte in the room while Philippe Laurent described the German case law.

I also made it to the cross-desktop room to see a few talks including Dave Neary’s talk on mentorship and Allan Day’s talk on Every Detail Matters. The rest of the day was jam packed with intense conversations and meeting people, which was capped off with a really fun time at the GNOME beer event. I even met a few GNOME hackers I’d not met before. It was also great to hang out with my mentee, Emily Gonyer who not only is experiencing her first conference, but also manned the GNOME booth most of the day!

Must get some sleep to prepare myself for tomorrow’s FOSDEM craziness.